Collaboration with Wood and Exceedence

The only way to make the most out of a renewable energy project is to carry out comprehensive techno-commercial evaluation of the technology. Exceedence Finance software empowers users to complete such evaluation, using Flexcom-based software as an input to WEC performance at a target deployment site for a wave energy farm (array).

An independent Seapower Platform LCOE Case Study was carried out by independent companies Wood and Exceedance acting together. Wood have particular expertise in Numerical Modelling while Exceedence are experts in RE-specific Financial Modelling , For a WEC Array to be commercially viable, the LCOE for the array must be less than the tarrif offered by the end user. E.g. If the tariff is 15c/kWh then the LCOE must be less than that value. Tarriffs of 22c/kWh are presently being offered for wave and tidal projects in Ireland.

Wood (formerly Wood Group) have achieved close agreement between OptiWave/Flexcom and the original LCOE modelling carried out using WEC-SIM (which is based on the previous research performed by 4c Engineering and Seapower Ltd under the Wave Energy Scotland (WES) NWEC2 project.

Exceedence have finalised their financial assessment and this will be available to publish as a Case Study, they demonstrated positively low LCOE results for the Seapower Platform, and current levels of under 15c/kWh for Arrays of Seapower Platforms.

“The levelised cost of our technology is ultimately a measure of how competitive the technology can be, and will determine its commercial uptake in the renewable energy sector. We needed to prove to our funders and to the public, that we could engineer down the costs of the Seapower Platform™ in a systematic way, and that this process has been key to our design decisions. We have spent significant time and resources learning how to do this ourselves with help from our Scottish partners, as OptiWave wasn’t available at that time.

We are very satisfied with the engineering and financial assessment performed using OptiWave, and in particular the demonstration of a realistic path to low and competitive LCOE levels. The advances in power production capabilities demonstrated by the software should also assist us in the search for further investment required to take our technology to TRL levels 8 & 9, and demonstrate that the technology has the potential to lower LCOE even further. The integrated nature of the engineering and financial models, in addition to the online database of wave resource information, are major plus points for us. We believe LCOE is the best metric to determine the competitiveness of all technologies in this sector”

We have also commissioned Wood’s visualisation team to create a high definition promotional video based on the engineering simulations for a Seapower Platform Array: